


Born Again

by whitchry9



Category: Daredevil (TV), The Defenders (Marvel TV)
Genre: Angst, Defenders Spoilers, Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Post Defenders, Recovery, Spoilers, dreams or memories who knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-20
Updated: 2017-08-20
Packaged: 2018-12-17 19:32:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11858202
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whitchry9/pseuds/whitchry9
Summary: The after, when no one thought there would be one.





	Born Again

The first sign was a vague movement of fingers.

She would have thought it was nothing, except it was followed by his eyes opening.

“ _Get Maggie. Tell her he's awake.”_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Everything hurt. Things hurt that he didn't think could be hurt, and yet, there they were, aching and letting him know he was alive and was going to suffer for it.

 

He couldn't hear, and that alone was enough to panic him, but he couldn't move enough to do anything about it, the best he could do was twitching his fingers, which sent waves of pain up his arm, convincing him that anything else would be foolish. He didn't even have the breath to scream.

 

He'd lost his hearing before. It was temporary. With any luck, this would be too.

 

He drifted off just as a presence appeared near him, a hand running over his brow.

 

 

* * *

 

 

They told him it took four days for him to be found. They didn't say how they found him. He didn't ask. They also told him that he had been there for nearly another week, recovering from his injuries, but they didn't tell him where 'there' was.

 

They could have been lying. Both his eardrums had been ruptured and were still healing, so his hearing wasn't even back to a normal human level.

 

What reason would they have to lie? They were nuns who had been taking care of him for a week. He didn't know if they had an ulterior motive, or some other reason other than out of the goodness of their hearts. He had grown more suspicious in recent years, and couldn't help but feel there was more they weren't telling him.

 

He felt hazy. It could have been painkillers, or a head injury, or just exhaustion. Everything hurt, but nothing was a sharp pain, which could have been painkillers or due to the fact that all the injuries were nearly two weeks old. He didn't know. He didn't like not knowing.

But he didn't ask.

 

Every breath hurt, and he bet if he could hear well enough, would sound like old ships creaking. Had his ribs been broken? Were his lungs bruised? Could lungs bruise? He knew that blast injuries often injured air filled organs, which was why his eardrums had burst, but didn't know what could happen to lungs.

 

He didn't understand how he didn't die. He fully expected to die, even before he got in that elevator, even before he sent Danny away with a few whispered words. But if it was two weeks later, and things still hurt that much, then what sort of injuries did he have initially? How had he not died, buried under tons and tons of rock and building and half of New York City? He didn't have any memory of those days. It didn't mean he wasn't conscious for parts of it, but he couldn't find any memories that correlated with that time. But still, four days with no water, no food, no medical care... how could he have survived? How could anyone have survived?

 

“How am I still alive?” he asked one of the nuns when they came in to change his bandages.

“God is looking out for you,” she told him.

“Why?”

She didn't say anything. She might have smiled though. He couldn't tell.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up to find a woman sitting on the end of his bed, whispering prayers over him. It seemed familiar somehow, like he'd been here before. Maybe he'd already woken up to the same thing, earlier in the day, the day before, and he just didn't remember.

But he couldn't help but feel in the memory, he was smaller.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He didn't ask why he wasn't in a hospital. He knew why. Even days after the explosion, a man with clear blast injuries showing up at a hospital, even if he was blind, was highly suspicious. Even a cursory investigation would reveal too many coincidences between him and Daredevil. It wasn't safe for him to be in a hospital.

 

He didn't ask about his friends, any of them. He didn't know if it was safe for them to know he was alive. Maybe it was better that the world thought him dead. For who, he wasn't sure. Himself?

 

 

* * *

 

 

His chest was a mess of lacerations and scrapes, probably from being thrown by the force of the blast, or by debris flying into him. His back was better. Did that mean he was facing towards the explosion? Away from it? The last thing he remembered was kissing Elektra.

 

_Elektra._

 

He wondered if she was alive. If he was, there was a chance she could be too.

He wasn't sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He knew if she was alive, she wouldn't give up. She wouldn't have given up, even before she'd been changed, but now...

Matt didn't know what he hoped for.

 

 

* * *

 

 

There was a large puncture wound in the left side of his chest. As far as he could tell, it had missed everything important, which was lucky, because otherwise he would have bled to death far before he could have been found. _(By who? How?)_ It still ached when he moved though, somewhere underneath the muscle.

 

He dozed most of the time, waking when the nuns came to bring him food and water or change the bandages covering his wounds. He could barely sit up, let alone bring a spoon to his mouth, so they propped him up on pillows and took turns feeding him.

 

Sister Maggie often spent time with him, and was frequently there when he awoke. She was the one that had been called for when he first woke up, and Matt wondered if she was in charge somehow.

 

And yet, she was the one who did the things like clean the sweat off his brow when he awoke from a nightmare he couldn't put into words, was the one to clean the remaining dried blood from his skin, to hold a straw to his lips so he could have a drink of water. Wouldn't the person in charge delegate those tasks to someone else?

 

And still she did it with a loving touch that was almost maternal, the cross around her neck nearly brushing Matt when she leaned over him. He couldn't say how, but it felt familiar.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He awoke when someone came into the room, tried to push himself into an upright position on the scratchy sheets.

“Stay down Matty, don't get up.” She placed a hand on his shoulder, and he eased back into the pillows.

_When had he told them his name?_

 

She squeezed out the cloth, and the room filled with the smell of blood.

 

 

* * *

 

 

It took him days before he was able to stand up on his own, and even then it exhausted him. Another day later and he was able to walk around the room. It was small, sparse, utilitarian, with a bed covered in scratchy sheets, a table containing first aid supplies, and a cross on the wall above the bed. It reminded him a lot of the orphanage.

 

He didn't leave the room. His hearing was still impaired, and without a cane, he didn't want to wander. Plus, he was still exhausted and in pain.

 

_Are those reasons or excuses?_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sister Maggie brought him breakfast the next morning.

 

“Why are you helping me?”

She helped him sit up. “Because you are hurt and can't do this yourself.”

“Not with breakfast specifically, in general. You know what I am, and the risk that entails. So why am I here?”

“We help many people here.”

“But you don't know me.”

She hummed, and he couldn't help but feel like there was something she wasn't telling him. He wondered if her heart was singing that she was lying, and he just couldn't hear it.

“'Do not forget to show hospitality to strangers, for by so doing some people have shown hospitality to angels without knowing it.'”

“I'm not an angel. I'm a devil,” he whispered.

She shook her head. “That may be your name, but there is good in you.”

_You can't know that._

 

“Murdock boys have the devil in them,” he whispered, and he thought Sister Maggie hesitated before feeding him another spoonful of oatmeal.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Have we met before?” Matt asked her when she brought him dinner.

He'd managed more laps around the room than yesterday, but still couldn't work up the courage to venture beyond the four walls.

“You grew up in St Agnes, didn't you?” she asked him.

Matt suspected she already knew the answer.

He nodded.

“I helped out there sometimes. We may have met then.”

Matt didn't need to hear her heartbeat to know there was something she wasn't telling him.

 

“What is this place?”

“A mission shelter.” She didn't elaborate beyond that.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He awoke the next morning to find a braille bible on the bedside table, which had been cleared of bandages and first aid supplies the day before. The wound on his side was only covered with a small dressing, and the lacerations and scrapes were healing well enough on their own.

He ran his fingers over the spine, felt the barcode that meant someone had gotten it from the Andrew Heiskell library. For him.

 

He didn't deserve their kindness.

 

When Sister Maggie brought him breakfast, he refused it.

“I need to leave. I can't stay here anymore. It's too much. I'm putting everyone in danger by being here.”

 

She held his arms firmly. “Matthew. You are not a prisoner here. You may leave any time you like. But I beg you to reconsider. Is it really safe for you out there right now? You are still healing. The people that did this to you, are they still out there? Because you cannot protect yourself in this state. You need time to heal, and here you are safe and cared for. Stay. Please.”

 

He didn't know why, but he listened.

 

 

* * *

 

 

He shaved that afternoon, feeling the healing cuts and bruises as he mapped out his face. The swelling around his eye had almost disappeared, but he could still feel the bruise, and he'd bet it looked colourful.

 

He wondered what Foggy had done with his glasses. He wondered what Foggy had done, full stop. They all probably thought he was dead. Was it cruel to let them continue believing it? Or was he protecting them?

One way or another, they would lose him.

Perhaps it was a small kindness to let it only happen once.

 

 

* * *

 

 

His hearing came back on the left side first, and he spent an afternoon misjudging the distance of things and bumping into them. That night he ventured out of the room for the first time, and found a hallway of rooms filled with people like him, the sick, the unfortunate, the lost. They must have been in a basement, because he could hear the large expanse of a church above him, the echo of hymns in the night.

He didn't go upstairs.

 

 

* * *

 

 

The next day around breakfast he found his way to the kitchen, following the sweet scent of pancakes. Sister Maggie was the one he found toiling over a stove top.

He offered his help, and for a while, he flipped pancakes in relative silence.

 

“How did you find me?”

“We didn't, persay. You were brought to the church, dropped on the front steps like a baby in a basket, still wearing the red suit. It was hard to tell what was blood at first, and what was just the fabric.”

He didn't know who would do that, except maybe... _Elektra._

He didn't let the thought fill his mind, just flipped the pancakes before they really needed to be flipped.

“We all knew who you were, of course, but no one recognized you without the mask until me.”

“Why?” he asked, trailing off. _Why didn't you call the police, take me to the hospital, ask more questions. Why are you keeping something from me? Why do you care so much?_

She didn't answer him.

“You said you helped at St. Agnes?” he asked instead.

“Yes.”

Her heart wasn't lying. But he'd been a lawyer for long enough to know when someone wasn't telling the whole truth either.

He piled the finished pancakes onto the growing stack.

 

“Were you the one who got me the bible?” he asked instead of pushing the subject.

“Yes.”

“And you're not going to ask how... How I do those things if I'm blind?”

“I didn't need to know.”

“And you're not curious?”

“No.”

And it was strange, because she wasn't lying. He didn't know why.

 

 

* * *

 

 

“Do you have a family?” he asked her over lunch, which was soup and sandwiches. It still hurt to lift a spoon to his mouth, but at least he could do it on his own.

“I did,” she told him. “But not anymore.”

There was a lie, finally.

 

 

* * *

 

 

Sister Maggie was gone the next day. He found a different nun in the kitchen when he went to offer his services. He didn't ask where she was, and the other nun, Sister Anna, didn't offer.

He scrambled eggs in silence.

 

The hearing in his right ear came back around lunch, and he spent the afternoon readjusting to having two ears working.

 

That night, he laid in bed with the bible on his lap, fingers running over it but not really reading any of it. His hearing was focused on the church above him, and the city beyond that. He couldn't tell where he was. Hell's Kitchen? Midtown? Hell, he could have been in Brooklyn for all he knew.

 

What he did know was that he had to leave. It had been three weeks since the explosion, three weeks since he had likely been presumed dead. His hearing was mostly back to normal, the lacerations and scrapes were largely healed, it no longer hurt with every breath, and he had been told the bruising was better.

He didn't need to stay.

 

_But why couldn't he make himself leave?_

 

 

* * *

 

 

He woke up with the bible still on his lap, his fingers still on top of a passage. It wasn't morning yet, still too early for most of the city traffic to be out.

 

Sister Maggie still hadn't returned from wherever she had gone. Her heartbeat wasn't anywhere in the church. Matt couldn't help but wonder if it was something he did.

 

While getting a sweater, Matt found the Daredevil suit hanging in the closet. There had been a valiant attempt at cleaning it, but he could still detect traces of blood and some sort of powder he didn't recognize. It wasn't quite dust or even debris from the building.

Maybe it was the substance that the Hand was looking for, the one that provided eternal life, or whatever it was they kept going on about.

And there was something to think about. If that substance really did bring people back to life, maybe it was how Matt had survived. Maybe inhaling the dust had kept him alive, maybe the dust entered his wounds and helped them close up before he could bleed to death.

 

Or maybe he was just making things up in an attempt to understand something that was beyond his comprehension.

 

The suit was largely intact, although he could feel neat stitches that someone had done to patch up holes where debris had punctured the armor. Other parts couldn't be patched up. One of the lenses was cracked, and one of the gloves was just gone.

 

Hanging around the neck of the suit was Sister Maggie's cross and a note in braille.

 

_Matthew_

_I'm sorry I couldn't be here to give this to you in person, but I knew I wouldn't be able to hide things from you much longer._

_Please don't feel you need to leave. You are welcome here as long as you need to stay._

_God bless._

_Margaret Grace Murdock_

 

 

* * *

 

 

Matt left her cross on top of the braille bible, and left the mission shelter in the early hours of the morning, the Daredevil suit stuffed in a bag, and the hood of his sweater pulled up over his head.

He wasn't sure if he was leaving to find someone, or just to disappear, but he suspected that in one way or another, he would figure it out.

 

 


End file.
